


Baptisms

by jellyfishline



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, One Shot, POV Dean Winchester, Unrequited Love, dean is very sad and closeted, not very explicit sex, sam and cas are discussed but don't appear, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-17
Updated: 2014-04-17
Packaged: 2018-01-19 18:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1480486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jellyfishline/pseuds/jellyfishline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 5x22 Swan Song. Before Castiel returns to Heaven, he washes Dean of his scars. He doesn't realize that Dean doesn't want to be clean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baptisms

He should've been expecting it, really he should've. He just wasn't thinking. He isn't trying to think—that's the point of this, the touching, the alcohol buzz under his skin, it's all just numbing, because thinking is something he isn't going to do tonight. Or tomorrow. Or any time. Ever.

Still. He should've expected it.

Lisa's hand hovers over his heart. Not like it had a minute ago, the hard, purifying scrape of her nails, every scratch this mixture of pain and pleasure and _yes please more._ Now she's still, hardly touching with her fingertips. Hesitant.

Dean's been in enough botched one-night stands to know this isn't a good sign.

He should say something. But he's afraid, because if he says the wrong thing then suddenly it'll be _this was a bad decision_ and _sorry just not a good time_ and _call me_ and he'll have to find his pants and his keys and a motel room but he's so fucking _tired,_ and he _needs_ this, needs touch, contact, comfort, just something to keep him from thinking. Or worse, dreaming. Waking up in the morning, when none of this will be a nightmare and he'll be alone. Alone, and cold, twisted up and sweaty in a motel bed. The thought makes him want to throw up, vomit beer and bile all over Lisa's bedspread. Look at him, mute and stiff, he's such a fucking great houseguest, such a fucking good lay.

He should say something. He can't open his mouth.

Lisa says, “That's new.”

He can't figure out what she's talking about, at first. He hasn't been stabbed in the chest lately—shouldn't be any new scars to throw her off. At least, not any more noteworthy than on his arms, legs, stomach, hands. He must look like goddamn Frankenstein, to her. Like he's pieced together out of scar tissue and corpse.

Except, no, wait a minute. All the scars he's gotten in the years since Hell vanished, didn't they? Cas took them. 'Course he did, just like last time—when you're a full-powered angel there's no reason not to throw in a free polish and wax with the resurrections and heals, Dean figures. But if it's not a scar, what's Lisa looking at?

_Oh,_ he thinks, as it hits him. The possession tattoo.

“Sexy, ain't it?” he says, peeling his lips into a smile. He hopes she can't see how desperate he is to make it all right, to make this go back to a not-talking, lots of sex kind of reunion.

She smiles back. That's good. But she doesn't get back into the rhythm of things, she's still on top of him but just... sitting. Watching. Tilts her head to the side, like she's got to see the fucking thing from every angle, and Dean has to look away, because the gesture is familiar somehow, even if he doesn't want to think why.

“Is that a star?” she traces it with a fingernail. Dean tries not to shudder.

“Pentagram,” he says. “For protection. Keeps demons out.”

Lisa freezes. _Shit,_ no, he didn't want to do that.

_Never bring up demons during sex,_ he thinks furiously, wonders why he doesn't have that rule already—but he's never slept with someone who knew the big secret, has he? Not Cassie, who kicked him to the curb the moment she found out—their brief reunion, though awesome, didn't leave much time for conversation—and other hunters don't count, they don't freak out about this shit like the civilians do.

He wishes Lisa would just get off him. If they're not going to do it, there's no point in just prolonging the awkward silence. But she still doesn't move.

“Demons? You mean, like—” Lisa's thinking this through. “Like possession?”

Dean hears the alarm on her voice, sees it on her face. He should've turned out the lights, of course. Maybe then they wouldn't be in this mess, be already on the express train to Happy Town, the outside world—the demons, the angels, the whole stinking pile of shit—ignored.

Instead, Dean hears himself say, “Yeah. Gets all Exorcist out there if you don't have protection on you. Gotta be prepared.”

Lisa's eyes go wide—for the first time that night she looks surprised, and that calmness about her, that steadiness Dean likes is just gone. “You were _possessed?”_ she says, almost gasps, like that's something ridiculous that never happens to anyone.

Dean starts to tell her no—and then he thinks, _Michael. Michael and Lucifer demons Meg Meg-possessed-Sam Lucifer Sam._

He shuts his eyes. Takes a breath. The air doesn't seem to fill his lungs.

_Sam._

“Dean?”

That's Lisa. Her voice is far away, but it's soft again, pleading. _I can kiss it and make it better,_ it says, _just show me where it hurts._

He can't. He wants to and he can't, because everything hurts and nothing hurts, because this isn't pain as much as a huge, swallowing gaping. A Pit. A personal Hell, carried around in his stomach. She can't make it go away. Nothing can.

_I'm gonna have to live with this,_ he thinks. _I'm gonna have to live with this my whole life._

There's something caught in his throat. He chokes it down before it can come out. It feels like swallowing a splinter. The dull ache isn't sharp enough for him. Not nearly.

“Dean, look at me. Please.”

He does. There's worry in her voice, and in her eyes and on her lips, and it's steadying, somehow, but he doesn't know why. It's like he's tipping over the edge but she's got him around the wrist. Her worry is weighted, anchoring. She doesn't want him to let go yet. Not much, but it's enough to keep him from slipping.

“I'm fine,” he says, because he heard somewhere that if you say something enough, you start to believe it, and maybe he'll never believe it, but she might. “Just—” he reaches for her, pulls her down to him, to his level, runs his filthy hands through her soft hair. “Don't wanna talk.”

She kisses him. He kisses back, and for a moment it's good, it's wonderful, it's pushing and pulling and no regrets and tongue. But then she pulls away again.

“I'm sorry,” she says, the words hot against his open mouth. “I didn't want to upset you, I—”

“Don't talk,” he says, kisses her, hard, like maybe she'll understand he doesn't want apology, he wants touch. Craves it. Sex is a kind of baptism, for Dean. It washes him clean, hollows him out, leaves him gasping and aching and _pure._ It drives everything out of him but pleasure; fills every inch of him with light.

He needs that now. Needs it more than he needed fucking Cas with his magic hands and his shitty goodbyes.

He doesn't want to think about Cas. Think about Lisa, think of the weight of her—body, heat and scent. Friction.

It's good. It's better than good. Sad, drunk sex shouldn't be this good. But maybe that's why it's good, like how greasy cold McDonalds tastes like a five-star burger after you've been starving a few days. He hasn't had sex in... months? Years? Too fucking long. He's willing to bet the same for her, that there aren't a lot of guys lining up to jump into bed with a single mom, even a hot mom yoga instructor with a huge fucking house.

What's great about Lisa is that she's desperate, too. He can tell in the way she pushes down on him—this is so different from the last time they did this, not sweet and lazy whole-weekend-to-ourselves but sweaty and clawing, clumsy like teenagers. He presses his nose into the side of her neck, squeezes her ass into his palm and wishes that was enough, that _good_ was enough. It's not. It's not enough because part of him wants this harder and faster—so hard it hurts and bruises and leaves him mangled, tangled out of these knots and so loose and empty the whole world feels wide. And part of him wants this gentle, wants warmth and nearness and praise, wants love. He won't get either. Lisa's too soft to wring him dry and her kindness doesn't calm him, it halts him, makes his thoughts spin out into wild dark places he doesn't want to go.

It's not enough for so long and then suddenly it's pitching forward, and it's too soon, it was only just starting to clear his head—and she sighs and he jerks and he says her name and it's over. Done. He waits for the warmth, for that holy feeling to seep into his skin. It doesn't come. He just feels exhausted and sticky. Spent, but nowhere near satisfied.

Lisa lays down next to him. He scoots a little so she won't cut off the circulation to his arm when he fits it through the shallow curve of her waist.

“That was nice,” she says. It's like a question, so he answers, “Yeah. It was.”

He isn't lying. _Nice,_ that's what you call it when it's not enough but it's not bad either, when you did your best and it didn't work out. Damned by faint fucking praise, but it's the truth, and the worst part isn't that it's true, but that she knows it is. She's not a housewife—not a virgin, not a blushing bride type. She's been in this position just as often as he has. Maybe more. Who knows.

She doesn't have any new tattoos, but the years have written stories on her just the same. Creases in her eyes that weren't there a decade ago—creases that weren't there three years ago, or maybe they were and he doesn't remember. His memory's shit half the time and he was sort of preoccupied back then anyway, what with the whole saving a bunch of kids from certain doom thing and trying not to die.

She's old now. They both are. That doesn't make her any less hot, but somehow, it makes it a lot harder to meet her eye.

Sorry, he wants to tell her. Sorry it wasn't better, and it won't get better. Sorry it was _nice._

He kisses her cheek. Her skin is soft and tastes like lotion. The muscle jumps when she smiles, and she's getting the wrong impression, thinking it's tenderness and not apology.

Well, maybe he can pretend it's tenderness. That this thing is about two people being lonely, instead of one person being lonely and the other one being so shattered a fucking angel couldn't put him back together.

Lisa runs her hand down his arm in soft, soothing strokes. It's distracting, the touch, and that makes it perfect.

She butts her forehead against his, and he waits for the press of her lips. It doesn't come.

“I'm sorry, Dean,” she says, instead.

No. No, no—she's not supposed to say that. It's not her fault.

“I didn't want to—to freak you out,” she says.

“Nah,” he says, trying to keep the panic down deep in his chest. He does not want to talk about this. “I'm fine.”

Lisa's still stroking his shoulder. It's more motherly than anything—the way you touch someone who's sick to their stomach, feverish, _wounded._ It should be cloying, but it isn't. He doesn't want her to stop.

“You got any other tattoos?” she asks, soft, almost like a joke. Changing the subject. He relaxes.

“Nah,” he says. “No tattoos. But—”

And then he sits straight up.

Too fast. Lisa jerks back like he smacked her and maybe he did, on accident, but—no. Fuck _no._

“Dean?” she says, and there's a tone in her voice he doesn't want to hear—this pitch, this _are you okay or should I call the cops_ thing that makes every hair on his body stand up. She's worried about him but now she's scared _of_ him, too, and he can't take that. He wants to tell her _it's fine, I'm fine,_ but the words aren't there, his throat isn't working, he can't pull himself together enough to lie.

He waves a hand at her, vaguely, and she flinches, she's almost crouching on the bed like she's trying to protect herself, like she might have to run and— _fuck._

“Just—gotta piss,” he says, and bolts for the bathroom.

If she says anything to stop him, he doesn't hear it. He locks the door behind him, his fingers shaking so bad the knob rattles.

He's naked. It's so cold on the tile it feels like he's freezing solid from the feet up, but he doesn't look for a towel. He just stands, blinking like an idiot into the mirror over the sink.

It's a big-ass mirror. So big he can see his whole body down to his thighs. It's been—fuck, it's been years since he last looked at his reflection, really _looked,_ for more than just checking out a wound or doing up a tie. He certainly doesn't look at himself naked. He doesn't have to look in a mirror to know he's a fine piece of ass. He'd rather let the approving once-overs and scribbled phone numbers of lonely souls from coast to coast of this great country tell him that he's still got the stuff.

But he looks now. Looks until the image swirls in front of his eyes, until the bright bulbs above the mirror burn dots into his vision, until he's slowly growing breasts because only teenage girls are this entertained by their own goddamn faces. There are goosebumps all down his arms. He can't even care enough to rub them away.

The scars are gone. Scars, blemishes, sunburn, _pimples_ —it's all gone. He looks like a fucking teenager without them. Like he's ten years younger and ten times smaller. Just when he was starting to look his fucking age for once in his life, it all gets wiped out. Undone.

With two of his fingers, the lightest of touches, Cas had washed him clean.

But Dean doesn't feel clean. Still dirty, only now he feels raw, like Cas peeled back three layers of skin to show the rot buried beneath. Stripped the calluses from his fingers, the mistakes and years from his flesh. Left him baby-smooth, childlike. Exposed.

The handprint from where Cas gripped him in Hell is gone.

He runs his hand over his shoulder, like he can't believe his eyes. Digs in his nails till it hurts, just to be sure. It's really gone. He doesn't feel anything—just skin, just the scratch of his hands, sensations crystal clear. Even the damaged nerves under the scar are healed, good as new.

_Asshole,_ Dean thinks, and sense-making or not, he is _pissed. Thought angels had to_ ask _before they take shit, you stupid son of a bitch._

But it's not like Cas asked when he gave it to him in the first place, is it? Castiel, angel of the goddamn Lord, healer of petty human scrapes—he could remake Dean by the molecule every time he got a paper cut, wipe out every spot and scar like it was nothing, but he left that mark when he raised Dean from the dead. It was fucking _creepy,_ to get marked like that, to crawl out of your grave with no idea how you got out except some Hell tattoo you don't remember getting. It was creepy—it was _nice._

It was _nice_ because it was a clue, a sign. That psychic, Pamela, turned that clue into a phone number, 1-800 CASTIEL. And sure, dialing it might not've been their best idea, but that didn't mean Cas hadn't left it like a calling card. Like a promise. The mark said, _call me, and I'll answer._ The mark said, _there was a reason for this._ It said that Dean hadn't been raised on a fluke, that he was... there was something in him worth more than his bones and his blood and his trigger finger.

Not that the purpose turned out to be anything great. But by the time Dean learned about his grand destiny as Michael's toothpick or whatever, he was used to having the mark. It was a reminder of Hell and a reminder of Heaven, and there were times Dean wanted it gone, but mostly it became a reminder of Cas, and _that_ , Dean didn’t mind so much. When Dean woke up out of a nightmare, the mark was there to tell him Hell was over. When Cas was wandering the Earth looking for his Father That Ain’t In Heaven like some big-eyed cartoon orphan, the mark was there to say he hadn't been a dream. There really was an angel that rebelled against Heaven for no reason, for _one_ reason—because Dean asked him to. Hell of an ego trip, getting a gajillion-year-old lightwave in a human meat suit to give up their reason for being, change their whole viewpoint, just because they said 'I am doubtful' and you said, 'join the friggin' club.' It was so easy, sometimes, to forget what Cas was. At some point between the apocalypse and the angelic impotency, Cas stopped being the angel on Dean's shoulder and started to just be Cas, just this weird dude who still didn't know how to use his voicemail and didn't understand half of the things that came outta Dean's mouth and stuck around anyway. The mark was there like a monument to what Cas was, powers or no powers: an angel of the Lord, a warrior of God. A friend.

And now it was gone.

_You can't just erase everything like that,_ Dean thinks. Or, maybe you can, but you _shouldn't._ Not after the kind of crap they went through. It should mean something when you end up dragging someone's ass out of the fire, time and again. But apparently not.

Cas wiped up Dean's mess and his bruises and blood and scars, said thanks for the memories and sauntered back up to Heaven where he belongs. It'd be stupid to resent him for that. Cas needs to be in Heaven, with his family, putting things back together. Cas doesn't owe him anything. If anything, Dean still owes him.

But would it have killed the feathery asshole to stick around a little longer? Just a day. Just a week. Just long enough to say a proper goodbye.

Dean wishes he was naïve enough to think that Cas didn't know, didn't understand that he was leaving him all alone down here on this sorry not-Apocalypsed Earth, alone with no Sam, no purpose, no _Sam._ But Cas did know. He's an angel, not an idiot. Cas knew what he was doing, leaving Dean alone in a puddle of dried blood with no family to speak of, and he just didn't care.

Of course he doesn't care. It's not like Dean matters in the grand scheme of things. It's not like Dean isn't just one more sad sack of misery in the world. Why would Cas give a shit if Dean drove off a cliff or ate his gun or drowned in a puddle of booze. Cas is a fucking angel, not a charity worker. He doesn't pop in for every random douche, snap his fingers and make everything better.

It’s not like Cas spent the past year at Dean’s side, ganking monsters and mourning friends and acting like a brother. All that friendship, all that… whatever it was, it was one-sided. It was all Dean. Cas might’ve come when Dean asked him to, but he never just showed up for the sake of it. Angels don’t just come around for a beer or a bite to eat or a ‘hey, how ya doing.’ They gotta have a purpose. Dean was Cas’s purpose, for a while, but now…

Now he’s on his own.

Cas has orders. And fuck it, Dean has his. Go to Lisa, be with her, live the apple pie life, don’t look for me. That’s what Sam told him. Dean doesn’t know if he wants to be here—no, he knows he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he’ll want anything ever again. But he doesn’t mind being here, with Lisa. And that’s enough. That’s all it has to be—just enough to get him through this moment, and the one after that, and the one after that. Asking for anything more, well, that’d just be greedy.

With that decided, Dean gets out of the bathroom. Doesn’t know how long he’s been in, but the bedroom is silent, dark, broken only by the blare of numbers from a digital clock. He pads to Lisa’s side with quiet feet. She doesn’t stir, not even when he lays down next to her, hands hovering over her hips. He wants to touch her. He wants to be alone.

He wants to be with someone, but that someone isn’t her.

“Hey,” he says. “I—”

She turns and looks at him. Through the dark, he can see her eyes. Sad, sad eyes, old as an angel’s. “Don’t,” she says, but it’s soft. “Just don’t. Let’s talk about it in the morning, okay?”

They won’t. There’s nothing to talk about. But Dean says, “Sure.”

He lets Lisa put her arms around him. It feels like an apology. He doesn’t know which one of them is feeling sorry.

It takes a long time for her breaths to even out, go steady and slow. It takes even longer for Dean to shut his eyes and lean back, let sleep start to tug him down, down.

_Cas,_ he thinks, half asleep and nose buried in Lisa’s hair, _you can go fuck yourself._

It’s his last thought of the day. It travels up to Heaven and down to Hell, and makes ripples through his dreams. But in the morning he doesn’t remember.

In the morning, there are worse decisions to be made.


End file.
